V1.03 Release Notes: Major Intro Builder Upgrade and Smarter Zip Files

Spoken is leveling up once again. With this V1.03 release, we’ve completely reimagined how authors build project introductions, making them flexible, modular, and distribution-ready from the very first passage. We’ve also streamlined how ZIP exports are organized with automatic installment numbering and rolled out stability fixes to improve playback performance.

Intro Builder Update

We’ve overhauled how authors create and customize their project introductions, making the process more flexible, transparent, and professional.

What’s New:

• Segmented Intro Fields
  The introduction is now broken into distinct, editable fields:

• Made with Spoken

• Title (project name)

• Author (required)

• Narrator Names (supporting multiple digital voices)

• Personal Intro (optional voice-recorded greeting)

All to be performed with any voice you select from your project.

• Inline Controls
  Every field includes direct controls for:

• Generate or re-generate narration at the passage level

• Editable text for maximum customization

• Narrator Selection
  Choose your narrator voice from a dropdown within the Made with Spoken credit, ensuring consistency across intros.

• Completion Check
  A new safeguard — “Complete Intro to Continue” — ensures your intro is finalized before you move on to Installments, making distribution-ready intros seamless.

This update makes intros more modular, customizable, and polished, giving authors greater control over credits, presentation, and overall professionalism right from the start.

Zip File Export — Take It With You

We’ve improved how project files are packaged for download:

• Each installment is assigned an ordered number corresponding to its position in the project file

• Numbering is automatically applied even if the author does not number their titles

• Exported ZIP files display installments in correct sequential order

• Numbering is visible only in file names (for organizational clarity) and does not alter original chapter titles.

Bug Fixes & Improvements

Playback is now more consistent across Studio, without the need for page refreshes

• Opening credits can now play more smoothly from the Chapters tab on project pages

• Several smaller stability fixes for reliability and ease of use

With V1.03, Spoken delivers a more professional, customizable workflow from the very first passage, improved organization on export, and greater reliability across Studio

Spoken V1.02 Release Notes – LPF Distribution Files, New Retail Samples, Passage Upgrades, and the Dawn of The AI Audiobook Company™

Spoken V1.02 is all about making your audiobooks distribution-ready. With this release, we’re delivering full LPF-compliant downloads, Independent Passage Editing, retail-ready samples, smoother playback, and a set of refinements that raise the bar for production quality.

LPF File Downloads for Distributors

Spoken now provides LPF-compliant files for download, meeting the standards required by distributors such as InAudio. Projects are automatically structured to align with professional audiobook submission requirements:

• Chapters and segments

• Opening credits standardized:

• “Made with Spoken, Jingle, [Title], Written by [Author Name], Author-recorded introduction (optional).”

• Retail samples under 5 minutes

• Audio requirements:

• Constant bit rate ≥192 kbps, 44.1 kHz sample rate.

• 1000ms of silence (room tone) is now added to the beginning and end of every installment, including opening credits.

• During mastering, the first passage’s padding is automatically stripped and replaced with this standardized 1000ms silence.

• Cover art

This ensures audiobooks created on Spoken are ready for distributor submission the moment you export them.

Independent Passage Editing

We’ve refined how the Update button works at both the passage and batch level, giving authors more control and flexibility when revising narration.

Individual Passage Updates

• Clicking Update on a single passage now processes that passage independently.

• Multiple passages can be updated in parallel if each is triggered individually.

• Cancel will cancel that passage’s update, including narration if it has already started.

Batch Updates

• Clicking the Update X Passages button at the bottom of the page processes all pending passages together, in one batch.

• While a batch update is running, individual passage Update buttons are disabled (grayed out).

• Authors can still edit passages during a batch run; updates can be applied once the batch completes.

This new design provides a clear distinction between individual passage control and installment-wide batch updates, while preventing conflicts and ensuring smooth processing.

5-Minute Retail Samples

Spoken now automatically generates 5-minute samples for every project:

• Included when you Take It With You (TIWU).

• Streamable directly on your project page as a preview.

This makes it easy to promote your audiobook and meet retailer requirements with no extra steps.

Playback Improvements

Narration now includes better breathing room between passages, eliminating cutoff issues and creating a smoother, more natural listening experience.

Spoken is The AI Audiobook Company™

With this release, we’re unveiling an expansion of our brand identity: Spoken, The AI Audiobook Company™.

This moniker reflects our singular focus. While many companies experiment with text-to-speech, Spoken is purpose-built for authors and storytellers. Our mission is to deliver professional-quality audiobooks with unmatched listening experiences — and to ensure your work is distribution-ready for every major streaming and retail platform.

This identity represents more than a tagline — it marks Spoken’s evolution into the dedicated home for AI-powered audiobook creation.

Fixes & Polishing

This release also resolves a wide range of issues to improve stability and workflow:

• UI fixes for clearer, more consistent display.

• Narration reliability improvements, reducing glitches and dropouts.

• Character merging is more accurate in multi-voice projects.

• Passage editing is smoother and more reliable.

These refinements make the authoring process more seamless and dependable from start to finish.

The Face Behind the Voice

We often emphasize that there are humans behind all this tech – those who program it to analyze and parse your characters, and those who are using AI to create passive income in new ways. The Face Behind the Voice introduces you to some of the voice actors whose voice clones are frequently selected for Spoken projects.

Meet Alicia McCalla … the voice behind “Alicia Speaks” 

1. Tell us about how “Alicia Speaks” came to speak?

Alicia Speaks actually began as my pen name for narration. I wanted to create some separation between my fiction author work and my narration projects, so readers wouldn’t be confused when I branched into affirmations, meditations, or even lending my voice to other people’s books.

Narration itself came naturally. Back when I was a school librarian, I was always reading stories aloud, running story times, and teaching school-wide lessons through our school TV series. I also trained students in media production. Using my voice to teach and tell stories has always been a part of me.

A few years later, author J. Thorn suggested I try professional narration, he told me I had the perfect voice. That encouragement pushed me to take the ACX Masterclass. I remember thinking, “I’ve been teaching Audacity to my students for years… I can do this.” So I went for it, and narration became a natural extension of my author journey.

When I tested ElevenLabs, I already had hours of recorded material from audiobooks and projects. I uploaded my voice just to see what would happen, and it turned out better than I expected. That’s how Alicia Speaks became both my narrator persona and eventually my digital voice clone.

2. What’s it like to hear your voice transcribe someone else’s story?

At first, it was surreal, like hearing an echo of myself reading words I didn’t write. But then I realized how powerful it was. Lending my voice to other stories connected me to a larger community of storytellers. It reminded me of all those years reading aloud to kids, stepping into another author’s imagination while still carrying my own rhythm and tone.

I’ve also noticed how few Black narrators are represented in this space. That makes it especially meaningful for me to lend my voice to projects that need a Black voice. Representation matters, and I’m excited to bring more depth and authenticity to stories that deserve to be heard in our voices too.

3. As an author and voice actor, how does Spoken fit into your creator journey?

As an author, I’m always searching for ways to immerse readers deeper into my storyworlds. Narration was my first bridge into that. But producing a full-length audiobook on my own is time-consuming. Spoken opened up new possibilities, layering multiple voices, adding emotional nuance, and letting me create projects I can take and share wherever I want.

I recently ran my Oya Warrior Goddess Lore Book through Spoken. It wasn’t flawless, my Alicia Speaks voice carried the main narration, and there were a few glitches. But what I loved was the concept and the freedom to experiment. My husband especially enjoyed all the dramatic voices! Spoken isn’t replacing my own narration, but it’s adding a powerful new layer to how I deliver stories.

Alicia McCalla writes badass speculative fiction featuring Black women with skills, swords, and superpowers. She’s the author of The Oya Lore Book and creator of the upcoming Sentinel vigilante series. Through her digital voice clone “Alicia Speaks,” she also produces affirmations, meditations, and immersive audio projects. Alicia is passionate about reclaiming voice, building storyworlds, and creating empowering narratives for readers and listeners.

To hear her voice in action, check out Alicia’s book, Talons in the Shadows.